The chief financial officer of social gaming business Playtika said the business is excited about future merger and acquisition opportunities, as slightly higher revenue and significantly lower general and administrative costs ensured the business returned to profit in H1.
Revenue was up 9.6% to $1.30bn for the first half of the year.
However, the business then paid expenses of $1.00bn, though this was down 13.2%. The largest of these expenses were costs of revenue, at $366.9m, up 2.5%.
Research and development costs were up 40.4% to $177.0m, while sales and marketing costs grew 14.1% to $286.6m. General and administrative expenses, on the other hand, dropped by 58.0% to $171.9m.
This meant operating income was up more than 600% to $295.7m.
After interest expenses of $99.7m, down 4.9%, Playtika’s pre-tax income was $196.0m, after a pre-tax loss of $63.1m in 2020.
The business paid $70.3m in income taxes, up 74.1%, resulting in a net profit of $125.7m, compared to a $103.8m net loss in 2020.
After taking into account foreign currency exchange changes and changes in the fair value of derivatives, Playtika’s comprehensive profit was $116.9m, after a $103.8m loss the year before.
Looking only at the second quarter of the year, Playtika’s revenue came to $659.2m, up 1.3%. After operating expenses of $493.8m, its operating income was $165.2m, compared to an operating loss of $72.0m in Q2.
After accounting for taxes and other income, Playtika reported a comprehensive profit of $91.2m, after a comprehensive loss of $137.2m in the previous year.
“Our business in the second quarter accelerated across several key areas,” said Robert Antokol, chief executive of Playtika. “We enhanced player conversion, drove revenues to our proprietary platforms and ramped up new game development, allowing us to announce our upcoming new game’s global launch ahead of schedule. With this momentum we feel optimistic about our prospects for the remainder of 2021 and beyond.”
Craig Abrahams, president and chief financial officer said the business was now planning acquisitions having secured a large amount of liquidity.
“We were pleased to achieve organic revenue growth against a challenging comparable in the prior year quarter,” he said. “Our teams utilized our live-ops capabilities to develop and leverage our Boost technology platform across our game portfolio, allowing us to re-iterate guidance for both revenue and adjusted [earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation] EBITDA for 2021.
“We remain optimistic for the future with over $1.7 billion of available liquidity to drive our M&A initiatives.”